


Linger

by winterlace



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1535063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterlace/pseuds/winterlace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has this dream...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Linger

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during the mid-season break and I'm little late posting it. Whatever. Take from it what you will.

She has this… dream.

She would call it a reoccurring dream, though she only remembers the first instance of it being after their road trip through Maine. But even then, there was an overwhelming sense of familiarity that she’d been here before. 

In the dream she’s a princess. 

(In her reality she scoffs at this, like, princess? Really? But in her dream it’s always just an accepted fact.)

She’s part of a beautiful kingdom.

(Which doesn’t exist… and she wants to say realm, she always wants to say realm, it’s always there on the tip of her tongue but she knows that it's only a word they use in cheesy medieval TV shows. She forces herself to correct it to world. But it never sits right.)

Her parents are not only royals, but generous, kind and loving.

(And never abandon her on the side of the road.)

She wears a ball gown.

(A ball gown. Can you fucking believe it? An actual ball gown. Full length. Poufy skirt. She’s pretty sure there’s some sort of corseting going on with the way it digs into her ribs, cannot take in a lungful of air and her boobs never look this good in just a bra.)

And she dances with a handsome sailor.

(She feels her breath catch every time his too bright blue eyes catch hers.)

They always talk intimately in her dream. As if they’ve known each other. Or as if the dream demands that her walls not be present. She never feels uncomfortable. Being this open with any man would normally set her nerves on fire but not this man. This man she feels safe with. 

(She doesn’t understand that.)

“I like your hair short.” She says offhandedly but then frowns as she struggles to remember a time that she ever saw his hair short. It’s always been like this, a ribboned ponytail. But he only chuckles at her.

“Of course, lass.”

“I’ve never seen you with shorter hair. I don’t know why I said that.” She adds, not placated by his response. But he just smiles at her. Indulgently. Freely. She struggles to identify what it is about that smile that sets off butterflies in her stomach, why that smile feels so precious to her. As if she knows that it was a smile that was so rarely open and genuine as it was with her. 

(She’s not used to be smiled at like that. Like she meant something. Like she was special.)

Suddenly her hands feel hot. One gripped in his and the other on his shoulder and there’s a growing ball of warmth emitted from the small of her back where his other hand holds her to him. 

“I don’t want to go back.” She whispers.

(She tells herself she doesn’t understand why she says that. But the truth that sinks like a heavy cold stone in her stomach is that she has everything here but …)

“You can’t stay here luv, you’ve got your boy to think about and this isn’t the people we are.”

“Are these the people we were supposed to be?”

“No.” He replies with certainty. “These are the people we were.”

(She wants to argue that she was never a princess. She was never loved by her parents. Never loved and adored by anyone except Henry and he’s the only one not here.)

This man, in his impeccable navy uniform, smiles down at her sadly. “You were never intended to become acquainted with this man. And the woman you are would never deign him a second glance.”

“The woman I am?” She questions.

“Yes Swan,” he whispers into her ear, “the woman you are.” She lets her eyes flutter close at the feeling of his hot breath ghosting against her neck and feels them open as he moves away. It’s suddenly quiet, and her senses tell her that the hall is now void of the crowd that filled it only moments before. The chandeliers are dark. The decorations gone. The walls are crumbling and the grand ballroom was merely another dilapidated room in a ruin of a castle. 

She lets herself take a surprised step backwards and then glances at her feet when she doesn’t feel the brush of the ball gown against her ankles only to see that it’s been replaced by jeans and her favourite boots. 

(She’s always surprised even though this is the part that feels the most real. This is the part that feels predictable.)

She finds herself almost frightened to look up and find him gone like the rest. But she forces herself and her heart skips viciously in her chest when she finds him still in front of her. Gone is the blue jacket and cream breeches, in their place is black leather and a red vest. Gone was the ponytail, tousled shorter hair in its place, he has stubble and eyeliner.

(Eyeliner? Really? Eyeliner?)

He’s impossibly darker. Edgier. Sexier if possible. He positively smouldered. And then she sees the glint of metal where there was once a hand.

“You’re you.” She says as if it made all the sense in the world.

“As are you, luv.”

She lets herself glance around the ruin, then turns back to him. He remains just out of reach, just at the edge of her grasp. She desperately wants to pull him against her again, ignore the darkness and the ruin and the cold that now seeps through everything.

“I know something’s wrong.” She finds herself confessing. “I know something’s missing, why can’t I remember?”

“It took me three hundred years to find you darling. I wouldn’t forget you so easily.”

“What are you talking about?” But he’s already gone.

She blinks against the bright morning light invading her bedroom and it takes her a minute to remember she’s in her bedroom in New York. She’s home. She’s safe. The edges of the dream already fading in obscurity. 

“I think I danced with a sailor in my dream last night.” She says to Henry over their morning hot chocolate with cinnamon.

“Mine was better.” He replies in between shoved mouthfuls of pancakes between his lips. “Snow White was teaching me to sword fight.”


End file.
